Good grief: it’s the (I should have expected it) reductio ad absurdum of legal advice. Until now, the briefest piece of wise legal counsel was “It depends.” Now a UK lawyer is offering free advice in 140 characters, which, though longer than that gold standard, doesn’t seem wiser.

A smiling man styled only as The Legal Oracle (@thelegaloracle) is offering on Twitter:

Tweet your legal claim or question and we will answer it free of charge. Taking the fear and mystery away and making law accessible.

Speaking of “fear and mystery”, who in his or her right mind . . . [more]

The comment period for the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20’s issues paper on “Client Confidentiality and Lawyers’ Use of Technology” closes on December 15th. The Commission is soliciting feedback from all corners, but would particularly like to gather feedback from practicing attorneys. The scope of the issues raised by the paper is broad:

1. Form of the Commission’s conclusions. The commission is soliciting feedback on how to best release its findings: a white paper, legal technology resource site, or possibly a change to the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct.
2. Best Practices. What “best practices” exist for the

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Earlier this week, Ontario Ombudsman André Marin released his report into the use of a secret regulation that gave police what he called “extravagant” and “likely illegal” powers to crack down on peaceful people protesting last summer’s G20 summit in Toronto or to arrest uninvolved, simply curious citizens caught in the vicinity of the security fence around the summit location.

So, you say: yet another official report that repeats the old refrain “cops go overboard, violate civil liberties”. La-dee-dah, big whoop, what else is new? Either you’re a law and order fan – so these reports do not impress you. . . . [more]

Careful readers of Slaw’s Linkblogs may have noticed Steve Matthews post on adding RSS feeds.

While that’s very useful, I also want to point Slaw readers’ attention to the new website Attorney at Work on which Steve’s post is published and to an invitation to receive “One Really Good Idea Every Day”.

The project is the brainchild of Merrilyn Astin Tarlton, and Joan and Mark Feldman who were responsible for many years for the excellent Law Practice magazine of the American Bar Association. So I must declare an interest. You’ll see a number of members of the . . . [more]

This communiqué distills the output of the experts’ deliberations at the Vancouver colloquium. While the depth of discussions obviously resulted in many subtleties which cannot be represented here, this document serves as the definitive record of the Vancouver gathering. It is organized chronologically, hewing closely to the agenda of the meeting

A SLAW hat-tip to Brenda Wong and her co-blogger Karen Sawatzky at Library Technician Dialog for making me aware of the following online slideshow called If you Want to Work in Libraries, Here are 10 Things You Need to Know by Ned Potter.

I think the author nicely captures some of the opportunities for working in the information field (e.g., working with people and technology) along with some of the challenges (e.g., constant change and tough competition).

Many of these topics arose in my regular guest lecture to the FIS 2133 Legal Literature and Librarianship class earlier this week at . . . [more]

The Law Society of Upper Canada is currently reviewing the ethical and procedural issues relating to the “unbundling” of legal services, otherwise known as “limited scope representations” or “limited scope retainers.”

Unbundling is the concept of taking a legal matter apart into discrete tasks and having a lawyer or paralegal provide limited legal services or limited legal representation, that is, legal services for part, but not all, of a client’s legal matter by agreement with the client. Otherwise, the client is self-represented. While the Law Society’s Rules of Professional Conduct and the Paralegal Rules of Conduct do not prohibit such . . . [more]

On December 9, 2002, Bill 213, the Justice Statute Law Amendment Act, 2002, overturned the previous prohibition in Ontario against contingency fees, the last province in Canada to do so. The history behind this introduction is detailed in the Supplementary Report to the Ontario Civil Justice Review.

The policy reasons for supporting contingency fees was that it would theoretically increase access to justice and save clients money by moving away from a billable hour system. The concerns included that the lawyer might become an “interested party,” there would be less incentive to settle, and there would be more . . . [more]

The Chief Justice of British Columbia, Lance S.G. Finch, addressed a meeting of the B.C. Branch of the Canadian Bar Association recently on the subject of access to justice, singling out the high cost of legal services as a prominent, if not new, obstacle to that goal. He said:

…I would call [the high cost of legal services ]the elephant in the room. Everyone knows it’s there, but no one wants to talk about it. I think it is time to open the conversation.

… I respectfully suggest it is time for the bar to address this question openly. It

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Last week I covered the Vigna v. Levant case and mentioned that comments are a poor way to gauge readership for the purposes of damages, which some readers agreed with.

A recent article in the Alberta Law Review by Matthew Nied discusses this further, Damage Awards in Internet Defamation Cases: Reassessing Assumptions About the Credibility of Online Speech. Nied is a recent UVic graduate, former Law is Cool contributor, and author of the Defamation Law Blog, which is currently on hiatus while he clerks at the B.C.S.C.

Nied proposes that given the hyperbole frequently found online readers . . . [more]

It was announced today that Thomson Reuters acquired Pangea3, “one of the largest legal outsourcing services company in India.”

Legal outsourcing services companies – otherwise known as “legal process outsourcing,” or LPO – are fairly new. LPOs involve law firms (and companies) hiring companies in India, the Philippines and elsewhere to carry out voluminous documentary review and other legal work, at cheaper cost. Some thought the trend was a fad, but with today’s development, it looks like LPOs are here to stay.

What will the impact be on practicing law in Canada? There will still be demand for . . . [more]

The big news from London is that Norton Rose is taking over Deneys Reitz, one of South Africa’s largest firms – and African firm of the year in 2006 – and the Canadian firm Ogilvy Renault. The expanded firm will fly under the Norton Rose flag.

The two firms will formally join the Norton Rose Group on 1 June 2011. This will raise the firm’s head count to over 2,500 lawyers spread over 38 offices.

Norton Rose Chief Executive Peter Martyr commented

This is a very exciting move…Canada and South Africa are increasingly influential economies for our clients

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